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Mom admits stabbing her girls

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Roseville woman who stabbed her daughters pleaded guilty to attempted murder charges to spare them a trial.

By ANTHONY LONETREE, Star Tribune

She took the stand, a bit unsteady on her feet, but strong in voice and with a lifetime of accomplishment behind her: a Ph.D. in English and an M.B.A., too, the latter from M.I.T.

But Sylvia Sieferman, 61, of Roseville, also was a mother accused of the unthinkable -- the attempted stabbing deaths of her two daughters -- and she appeared in Ramsey County District Court on Friday to plead guilty to two counts of attempted second-degree murder.

Sieferman detailed it all -- the depression she had been suffering, her fears of leaving her daughters to strangers if she killed herself, and how last Aug. 21 she went into her daughter Linnea's room with a butcher knife and a pillow.

"I cut her throat," Sieferman said, matter of fact, but not before first covering the girl's face, she said, "so she wouldn't see what was happening."

Her attorney, Paul Rogosheske, said that despite what he believed to be a viable mental illness defense, Sieferman decided to plead guilty to spare her two daughters -- both 11 at the time of the attacks -- the ordeal of a trial.

The plea agreement with the Ramsey County Attorney's Office calls for Sieferman to be sentenced July 2 to 200 months in prison, of which she would be expected to serve two-thirds, or 11 years.

Later this month, Rogosheske said, Sieferman also returns to court to terminate her parental rights. The girls, who are reported to be "doing well," Rogosheske said, are to be raised by a relative of their mother.

'At rope's end'

When officers arrived at the family's townhouse in the 400 block of County Road C last August, they found Sieferman alone on the front steps, bleeding heavily from a self-inflicted stab wound to the neck, and yelling: "Kill me! Kill me!"

Upstairs, Linnea, one of the two girls she had adopted from China, was in a pool of blood. Linnea's sister, Hannah, attacked by her mother with an ax, escaped to a nearby home.

During the attack on Hannah, authorities say, Sieferman told the girl: "I'm a bad mom ... I had to do this."

On the stand Friday, Sieferman recounted being hospitalized in June because of fears she might harm herself and her daughters. She'd lost a job in May, she said, part of a spiral that began in 2004 when she was laid off from the Guidant Corp. (now Boston Scientific).

At the time of the attacks, she said, she had been drinking eight to 10 3.2 beers per day, and had started that morning with two to four beers.

She recalled stabbing Linnea, she said, after the girl accused the mother of loving Hannah more than her because she'd bought her new shoes. Sieferman said Friday that she did not remember the second attack.

Sieferman was examined by three psychologists, Rogosheske said, and one -- hired by the defense -- would testify that Sieferman did not know her actions were wrong. But a psychologist tapped by the state and a third assigned at the request of Judge Paulette Flynn disagreed.

Her attorney said Sieferman simply "felt at rope's end. A mother is not going to come up with an idea to kill her kids."

As she prepares for prison, the former Boston University professor now hopes to do good there, Rogosheske said. In jail, Sieferman noted how many women could not read or write, he said, and she aims to teach again.

Anthony Lonetree • 612-673-4109

2009 May 15